


Stop Asking Questions

by becausemagnets



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Drug Addiction, M/M, maybe eventually sex, sketchy motives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 13:23:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/becausemagnets/pseuds/becausemagnets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern powered AU in which Erik spends a lot of his time overdosing in bathtubs and Charles Xavier is the cardiganed face of the Mutant Rights Organization and nothing is really as it seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stop Asking Questions

His eyes are blue, as blue as the sky reflecting the ocean, prisms of blue blue blue, and he's touching Erik's face, saying something, but Erik's caught in his eyes, drowning in them like he's been drowning all of his life. _stay with me stay with me stay with me Erik stay with me_ that's what he's saying. Erik clings to the man's cardigan, worn, smooth in his hands like it's going to slip through them, but Erik's making a fist as hard as he can, his hands shaking, and _mein gott blue eyes_. 

“Erik. Erik. Stay awake, please, Erik. Erik, can you hear me?” 

Erik pulls, and then blue eyes are nearly an inch away from him, and there is a chest hitching against him, almost breathing for him, legs tangled together. They're in a bathtub, the tile peeling on the floor, mildew crawling like cancer on the ceiling. He can feel breath on his cheek, like rain, and he rubs his hands across the cardigan, soft over hard muscle, and he tries to talk, but he feels like his mouth is filling up with water. _Save me_ , he thinks very loudly, and he can feel his whole body like it's going to close in on itself, only alive where they're touching, chest to chest. 

“You're not alone, Erik. You're not alone. Stay awake.” 

Erik wants to ask how this man knows his name. Wants to ask him where he got an accent like that in the middle of New York. Wants to ask him why he's saving Erik's life in the shittiest bathtub in Westchester. But instead he says, “Kiss me,” his voice wheels over gravel, distant, not as close as the blood pumping in his ears, not as close as this man he doesn't even know. He ghosts his fingers over the man's cheeks, and the man flinches, but then he leans into Erik's touch, almost like a cat. 

“What?” It's a whisper, but it goes straight through Erik, like he whispered it under Erik's skin. 

“Kiss me. I promise I'll stay awake if you kiss me.” 

“I—okay.” 

He kisses like he's trying to pull all of the water out of Erik's lungs (or the drugs out of his veins, but that could take an entire lifetime) and his hands are shaking on Erik's face and his breath is shallow and Erik wants to swallow it all up, feeling like everything inside him begins and ends where their mouths are touching, live wire meeting live wire. He accidentally turns the tap in the bathtub, the metal grating at him like an itch, dousing them both in cold water, but the man doesn't stop kissing him, water running between their mouths, cold and metallic on their tongues. Erik doesn't fall asleep and he doesn't die, both miracles in and of themselves. When he wakes up, he tastes like expensive coke and blood.  
–

Emma holds an ice pack on his forehead as he spits blood in the sink. “You have to stop doing this, sugar.” Erik doesn't say anything because they both know he can't. He takes the ice pack from her and sits on the toilet. At least he knows where he is now. “Lehnsherr. Get your head on straight before you kill yourself.” 

“Could say the same thing to you, _sugar_.” Her make-up is still flawless, but Erik knows she hasn't slept, barely visible bags under her eyes, and her hair is slightly flat in the back, a sign that she'd been thoroughly fucked out at some point, which could only mean she had held her head under water long enough, too. “Who was that guy, though?” 

“What guy?” She sits primly on the bathtub, crossing her legs at the ankle, not a single stain on her white mini-dress. 

Erik sighs. Though he's asked Emma to stay out of his head and she listens to him mostly, unless they're both too high and their minds run together, sometimes it's inconvenient. “Brown hair, blue eyes, wore a cardigan, didn't do anything but drink whiskey and look vaguely amused all night, doesn't dance, has a blonde sister.” He leaves out, _saved my life, made out with me for several hours, left before I woke up with blood in my mouth_ , but the twitch in Emma's lips means she picked up where he left off. 

“Oh, sugar.” Erik is so used to Emma looking sickeningly self-satisfied and patronizing to even let it bother him. “That's Charles Xavier.” 

Oh.  
– 

Azazel shotguns the smoke into his mouth and Erik touches the pipe to prove to himself that he can still feel pain, maybe to burn his fingerprints off the tips, and it all hits his lungs and his heart at the same time, maybe like love and maybe that's why he's never been in love. Xavier is still a gnawing gnawing gnawing presence at the back of his mind and he hasn't been to Westchester in at least three days because he's been awake for at least three days. There is blood on the walls. 

Charles Xavier is the cardiganed face of the Mutant Rights Organization, always speaking about equality and moving forward as if the internment camps hadn't existed in their very lifetime. If Erik had the capacity to feel anything poltically inclined anymore, he might have been angry that it was Xavier who had pulled him out of his latest bottoming out cycle, but as it stood, he simply wonders if Xavier isn't just trying to get their names associated to add muscle.

Azazel runs a hand through Erik's hair, sticky and tacky with sweat, and presses his forehead against Erik's, laughs in his face, smoke smoke everywhere, a thick, curling cloud and Erik sucks it up in a smooth motion, coughs it back out into Azazel. “You looked like you were falling asleep, comrade.”

He can feel Emma, a crystalline intrusion, and she's trying to pick at his brain, dig through all his mental file cabinets, looking for _Xavier Xavier Xavier_ , but Erik snaps them all shut, sends her out with a metallic ringing, thinks, no. No. Not him. Never him. Emma is only mad that another telepath has his hooks in him, jealous that her powers are so subdued—from the drugs and the fucking and living inside the minds of people like Erik Lehnsherr, who were content to watch the whole of mutant kind die with him—while Xavier's powers pounded at them all like a call to war. 

Erik is leading his own kind of mutant resistance. He is resisting mutants.  
–

He licks cocaine off of Emma's fingers and her thoughts are like uncut diamonds in his mind, initiated by the contact, _Xavier's here Xavier's looking for you do what he wants_. Erik kisses her on the cheek and tells her not to worry, rubbing his thumb against his gums, _numb numb numb all numb_. “If he gets inside that head of yours, he won't be as much fun as I am,” Emma promises, her lips moving against his cheek, but the words rolling like thunder in his head, fingers light on his temples like she's leaving her name there. She snaps them away because Erik must be thinking about the kiss, about the cold water, about _stay with me stay with me stay with me_. 

“I'll be fine.” 

A blond kid who has bumped him some crystal before hands him a red cup and Erik swishes it around his mouth, not feeling a thing until it slides down his throat, and he can't feel any metal in the room, no metal at all, and he can't feel Emma using her telepathy like an Erik GPS and he can't feel how scared he is, not even on the back of his tongue. Before he's thought about anything at all, his teeth on edge and his blood jumping under his skin, he strips his shirt off and dances with the blond kid, Alex, he's called, and though he'd probably like to do something else, his spine feels like it's being seared, all of his synapses alive, sparking when his fingers brush over Alex's hips and Alex gives him a bump and it feels like fire, straight from nose to brain, and he's kissing a meth drip out of Alex's mouth, tasting burnt flesh and metal metal so much metal and things are getting out of control fast, his heart hammering against his ribs like it's trying to break free of him, which isn't a a bad idea. His nose starts bleeding and he loses Alex when the dance floor fills up and then he feels Xavier like a pin in the back of his mind, sharp but not painful, almost like the ringing of a bell through his consciousness. 

Xavier presses himself against Erik's back, bare hand right on the spot where his nerves all come together and it feels like he's sent all of himself up into Erik, imprinting himself into every single nerve connection, but Erik grabs his wrist and pulls Xavier forward, presses Xavier's palm flat against his bare stomach and keeps dancing, Xavier's breath ragged and sickly warm between his shoulder blades. He tries not to think, his brain a swirl of contact and the smell of sweat and the taste of drugs and what he's heard about Charles Xavier. 

He's heard that Charles Xavier killed his stepfather, just burned up his mind with a single mental whisper. He's heard that Charles Xavier made people fall so madly in love with him that they literally ripped themselves apart when they couldn't have him. He's heard that Charles Xavier has given people the best orgasms of their lives without touching them. He has also heard that Charles Xavier is the reason that all mutants are running scared, that Charles Xavier wants to fight. 

“None of those are true,” Charles whispers against his neck, both hands down the front of Erik's jeans, fingers just resting under the waistband of his boxer shorts, warm warm impossibly warm. “But I can fix you, Erik. I can fix you, you know.” 

“That's not why you saved me, though.” Erik rocks his hips slowly against Xavier and Xavier's hands ghost up his body, pause near his nipples, stop on his throat, fingers light against his Adam's apple, and then he places them just where Emma did and Erik can _feel_ him, feel like he hasn't felt anything in years, like the way he used to feel magnetic north even in his bones, and if that's what Xavier means, if that's fixing him, Erik wants, wants so bad his knees start to buckle a little, the room swimming because his eyes are tearing up, but then Xavier's hands are back in his pants, nose pressed between his shoulder blades, and Xavier sets a new rhythm for them, pressing a soft kiss between his shoulders. 

“No, it's not.”  
-

Erik is dead sober, shivering in a bathtub as big as swimming pool, all the sweat on his skin cold and he focuses, all the metal pressing in on him, painfully digging into him, so close and tight and everywhere that even his ears hurt, behind his eyeballs, the insides of his teeth, and it's bad enough that he's kicking drugs, but he's also overdosing on _metal_ , being attacked by his own genetics. He sends out distress, knows that Charles is somewhere, but Charles doesn't come, Emma does. 

She's not sober, her pupils blown wide and she sits across from him in the bathtub, her lipstick like frosting. “Want me to give you something?” She shakes a bag at him. Heroin. The metal is screaming at him and he knows he's shaking the fixtures because he feels like tearing off his skin with his gnawed off fingernails, not wanting to _want_ that baggie so badly. He nods and crawls toward her as if pulled by a string in his chest and he feels the metal move with him, inch by inch, grating along with him, and then he's doing a line off the rim of the bathtub and he's resting his head against cool tile and then the metal rests around him, the metal leaves him alone.  
–

Erik remembers what it was like. He had been eleven. He had gotten mad. Everything metal in the room had flown away from him, magnets of the same pole, and he'd severely injured several children in his class. He was taken to the camps and though he could feel the metal like it was shoved down his throat, robbing all of his air, he couldn't bend it or break it or even move it an inch, straining all of himself, his whole body searing and screaming like the sound of nails on a chalkboard. And then there was Sebastian Shaw, Klaus Schmidt, whatever, raising him to be his successor through all manner of torture, unlocking all of his power with unbridled rage. 

He could feel the bullet go through his mother, like he could feel all the iron in the blood that followed. And he crushed all the metal in the room, tried to rip at the blood beating in Shaw's heart, but it was protected by skin and bone and mortality. Shaw was delighted and Erik felt like all the light had been drained out of the world. He took no satisfaction in his ability to control his powers, no pride, only an anger that festered and boiled and came up like steam, obscuring everything else. 

Xavier knows all of this because Xavier knows everything about him. Knows the things he's lying about and the things he'll admit to and the things he 's forgotten and the things he wishes he could forget. Xavier never had to stay in a camp, cloistered up in his mansion, coddled and privileged and allowed to develop a sense of pride, to discover the subtleties and distinctions of his mutation, what exactly real power meant. 

He runs his hand through Erik's hair, a light, humming presence in his mind, like a mental blanket, easing him beautifully through the come down, and tells him, “I can show you. There's so much more to you than you know. I can show you. Your mutation is beautiful, Erik, dangerous, but beautiful. I can show you.” 

It should be perfectly obvious by the way he's living that Erik doesn't want to see anymore.  
–

The next time he sees Charles the sun is coming up in the window behind him and Charles casts a long shadow across Erik. He's under the covers of Azazel's bed, a headache starting underneath his eyes, and there's glass in his leg and he's tired, burnt out, but he has no real desire to sleep, wanting to remain forever caught in the fog between asleep and awake. Charles brushes against his mind, almost like a display of affection, before sitting on the edge of the bed, his back rim rod straight. 

“I've missed you.” Erik lets his eyes slip shut, but it's like the outline of Charles's stiff back has been burned into his retinas, projected on the back of his eyelids, so he opens his eyes again and Charles has half-turned around, his eyes shining bright and his smile patient without being patronizing. 

“I think we might have reached a crossroads, Erik.” He's smiling, but he sounds grim, and Erik's terribly ill-equipped at handling other people's emotions or weighty conversations or anything that matters, so he hopes that Charles doesn't actually want him to make a distinct decision at any point in the near future. 

“What's that, then?” Erik shifts, sitting up a bit against the headboard, the room pulsing around the ache in his head. 

“One unfortunate side effect of knowing everything about you is knowing that you're not happy.” 

Erik laughs, letting his eyes slip shut again. He reaches out blindly for Charles, opening his legs and pulling Charles so his back is against Erik's chest, burying his face in his hair. It smells like generic store bought shampoo. “One unfortunate side effect of being alive is knowing that no one's happy. Are you happy, Charles?” 

“Right now or in general?” He's completely relaxed against Erik, his limbs almost weightless as he sinks in. Erik can feel Charles's voice reverberate through his own chest and it makes him feel kind of exposed. Erik's not good at exposed. Actually, Erik's only good at feeling absolutely nothing genuine at all. At one point, he had been a high functioning drug addict—he could still smile without getting a nervous tick in his jaw, he could still have sex, he could still carry a conversation, he could still sleep at night. He'd had friends that weren't drug dealers, he went to social functions that didn't dissolve into 5 AM come-downs, he could look at himself in the mirror. But he hadn't been very _good_ at it. 

“Either. Both.” 

“Right now, I'm happy.”

“That's enough, though, right?” 

Charles doesn't answer him. It gives Erik a false sense of security. Charles falls asleep before Erik does. Erik can tell by his breathing, slow and deep, his back rising rising rising and falling falling falling against Erik's front. Charles isn't there when Erik wakes up.  
–

Raven Xavier is nothing like her brother. She curls her tongue in Erik's mouth and she already tastes like OxyContin and gin, but she takes the pill from underneath his tongue and pulls it back, her hand on the back of his head, and her eyes flash from Xavier blue to yellow and then back again. Her teeth are perfectly straight and her life is a lie. 

Erik wants to engage in a philosophical discussion, to see if Raven Xavier is up to rallying the mutant cause or if she buries her powers in sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll, but he can feel his brain running slowly, heat starting in the pit of his stomach and spreading through to the very tips of his fingers, and he's glad that Raven's not a telepath and that she seems to have the same moral failings as Erik himself because at least that means Charles is theoretically capable of loving someone who can't lift both of their eyelids at the same time every once in awhile. Her hand dips to the back of his neck, her nails short, and her smile is easy, so fucking easy that it hurts.

“What are you running from, Erik Lehnsherr?” she asks him and Erik just laughs, leans forward, presses his face into her collarbone, hands on her bare shoulders. “It's not that black and white. Charles doesn't see that either. But listen to me, okay? You don't have to hate yourself to keep someone else from hating you. You're doing a better job than anyone else ever could, Erik. Yes, even _them_.” 

“Are you always this holier-than-thou or is it only when I get you high first?” 

Her eyes flash yellow again before she draws herself up to her full height. “I know what it's like to hide who you are, even from the people you love.” Her eyes flashed Emma Frost crystalline and her smile was a good imitation of Emma's before she turned back into her own blond shell. 

Erik isn't sure exactly what she meant by that, but he can feel his own heartbeat slow to a dull roar, blood full of OxyContin and stale beer and the way Raven Xavier smelled when she kissed him.  
– 

The problem, of course, is that for Erik, it _is_ that black and white because he killed Sebastian Shaw. Maybe if Shaw was still alive. Or if Emma Frost had gotten her well-manicured nails into him first, but no, Erik had done it with his mutation, the mutation Shaw groomed and fostered through Erik's agony. And it was all supposed to end. Instead, he had to go through a lengthy trial where all of the details of the mutant internment camps were revealed to the wider public as part of Erik's defense and he became the eye of a hurricane surrounding mutant rights. He was a hero to the integrationists as he had killed their greatest threat—the man who had been amassing a mutant army, trying to use Erik Lehnsherr as the queen on his chess board—and he was an easy villain for the anti-mutant factions—a mutant so willing to kill another mutant, it would be no great leap to think that he would turn on humans—but all Erik wanted was to be was able to sleep at night without all of the metal in the room migrating to him by morning. 

He was acquitted, but his lawyer strongly suggested that he go to a mutant internment camp survivor's group. He remembered Emma Frost from the camps. She had been as young as Erik then, maybe younger, but she had been by Shaw's side, without question, and Erik had never asked why. He remembered her cutting like a diamond through his mind, finding out what was most important to him, what hurt the most, giving everything to Shaw. And he wanted to kill her as much as he wanted to kill Shaw. Until she touched him. And showed him everything she had suffered at Shaw's hands. 

Emma got him high for the first time that night. He spent most of the night in the toilet, but that next morning, when the sun was coming up a sick heroin yellow, he sat on the balcony of her apartment in a shitty lawn chair and smoked an entire pack of her cigarettes and he couldn't hear metal grating at him for the first time in his life and she ran her fingers through his hair and asked him if he wanted some more and he thought maybe he'd gotten away with something. 

So yeah, it's pretty black and white. There are mutants like Sebastian Shaw and there are mutants like Charles Xavier and if Erik spends too much time thinking about it, or sober, he might end up like either one and he'd rather drive a steel pipe through his own chest. But of course, Raven Xavier wouldn't understand that, so Erik doesn't tell her anything.  
– 

Erik is in his boxers in Charles Xavier's swimming pool at Raven Xavier's invitation, Emma Frost's joint tucked behind his ear, Sean Cassidy's sunglasses on his face even though it's well past one in the morning. Everyone else is still inside, the bass beat floating outside, but it sounds far off, several miles away from Erik and the pool. He isn't kicking, not really, but he hasn't taken a bump tonight and he even refused a line off that kid Alex's flat flat flat stomach. He decides to light the joint, reward himself for his relative sobriety and his exhibition of self-control, and swims to the edge of the pool, reaches out, dripping, to shimmy the lighter out of his discarded jeans.

Charles slides the screen door closed primly and walks over to the edge of the pool, all of his steps calculating, his presence in Erik's mind like a warm buzzing, the same warm buzzing that's going through his whole body. Erik tilts his head up and he knows he's beaming, but he can't stop himself, smiling wider than he probably has in his whole life. Charles shuffles out of his shoes, balls up his socks and puts them inside his shoes and rolls his pants up, stopping just under his knee. He dips his feet in the pool. Erik offers him the joint, but Charles shakes his head, his hair flopping to hang around his eyes, bluer than the pool. 

“I've missed you.” Charles's voice is just as Erik remembered it, as though he's pulled the cadence of his own voice from Erik's memory system. Erik resists the urge to rest his head on Charles's lap and instead floats on his back, puffing out lazy, thick smoke rings. 

“I was afraid you weren't going to show up at your own party.” 

“I almost didn't. I've been busy lately.” 

“Hmm. You know, it's the drug addicts that are supposed to disappear for days without notice, not the clean-cut Oxford graduates.” 

“Is that what you are, a drug addict?” 

Charles's tone is light, but Erik always feels off-balance with him, his true intentions always shielded because no one's are shielded from him, so he answers glibly, trying to remember the constellations and who first showed him the night sky. Knowing his luck, it was probably Schmidt—Shaw, whatever. “It's not all I am, probably.” 

“No, it's not all you are. But I don't think I'm the one you're trying to convince.” 

Erik splashes him, watches the water turn Charles's slacks darker. “I'm kicking. Well, I'm trying to kick. I'm working out a regiment of sorts.” 

“I could help you. Take all of the pain away. I could even—” Charles hesitates, but Erik's tuned to him like magnetic north, so he presses on. “I could even rewire your brain, take _all_ of it away.” 

Erik stubs out the joint on the edge of the pool and presses his chest against Charles's legs, palms flat and spread on the tile on either side of Charles. “How much of me would go with it, though?” 

“That's what you're really afraid of, isn't it? That everything you've built your life around will sift like sand, straight through your hands, without the drugs. And what if they do, Erik? What's the worst thing that could happen to you?” 

Erik leans up, standing on the tips of his toes in the pool, and puts a wet hand to the back of Charles's head, pulls him down to meet halfway, and smashes their mouths together, their first kiss since that night in the bathtub. Charles finally returns the kiss, a tight pressure, worrying his teeth along Erik's bottom lip before curling his tongue around Erik's, sighing softly into his mouth. But for as gently, slowly, carefully as he's kissing Erik, he's like a forest fire in his mind, burning up everything he touches with a white hot need that both scares and excites Erik, welding itself to the pit of his stomach, lighting his whole body like a torch. 

Erik pulls Charles into the pool with him, tugging at his clothes as they get heavy, helping him lift them over his head until they're both in their boxers, treading water and holding onto each other's forearms. Charles is laughing and Erik has never heard him laugh, not like this, and Charles sends him a memory, bright but fuzzy around the edges like he tried to wipe it clean for Erik, of a young boy, skinny but solid, swimming in the pool with a blue girl, laughing and laughing and laughing as she changed her form over and over again. “It's not your mutation, Erik. It's not your mutation that took your parents from you, that tore you apart from the inside out. It was Sebastian Shaw.” 

“I don't know who I am without that. I don't want to know who I am without that. You like me well enough, don't you?” Erik pulls Charles closer, draws all of Charles's weight across his shoulders, kicks to keep them both above water. Charles laughs lightly and kisses him even lighter, wrapping his arms tight around Erik's shoulders, legs around Erik's waist, locked at the ankles. 

“Yes, I like you well enough. I like you as you are. I'm not sure _you_ do is all.” 

“Can't you just shuffle around in my mind a little and find out?” 

Charles kisses him much more urgently this time, and Erik forgets to kick, dipping them both underwater for a moment, but Charles keeps kissing him, tasting like chlorine and something Erik can't remember, something familiar, maybe a flashback of the night he'd nearly overdosed. 

“It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid,” Charles says against his cheek, out of breath, kicking with Erik. “I can get flashes, very indistinct, so if you're uncertain about something, so am I. But I can tell you one thing, Erik.” Charles presses his fingers lightly against Erik's temples and Erik can feel the pressure _inside_ his mind, more brilliant and loud than Charles ever is, the warm buzz now a pulse, another heartbeat inside his head. “Even if I do adjust things for you, make it easier, it won't stick unless you _really_ want it.” 

Erik kisses Charles again, his presence in Erik's head now a roar, yawning wider and wider as Charles's hunger for Erik grows. It would be alarming, off-putting, if it weren't swelling up, as hungry and desperate, in Erik himself. The pool's lights go out, but they keep kissing until the party breaks up.  
– 

Charles is gone often, but when he comes back, Erik is usually sleeping off a hangover, early morning sun hidden behind heavy, inherited curtains, and Charles comes into his room, primly folds all of his clothes until he's in his boxers or his briefs and pulls back the covers, wraps himself around Erik as if he's asking to be forgiven—or more accurately, assuring Erik that he knows he's being forgiven for something he doesn't think he needs to be forgiven for. It's habit forming, their weird give-and-take, a sick reliance on routine, but Charles doesn't say anything about it, so Erik lets it go, lets it form a habit. 

Charles is gone the morning Erik wakes up with the shakes. He hasn't taken a drug in two days, not a single one, but he drinks because his bones feel like they're splitting apart and he can't eat. Raven hands him a beer for breakfast without judgment and she tucks her blond hair behind her ears, easy easy smile like it's painted on, a habit forming smile. 

“Why aren't you ever blue?” He's shaking the utensils in the kitchen, but it would take far more effort than he can currently exert to stop himself, all of the metal in the room shivering in time with his bones. The clock on the microwave is flashing 12:00 over and over, but the one over the stove says 8:43. 

“Isn't that a personal question?” She pours vodka into an orange juice and pushes it at him, a valiant attempt to get him some nutrients that he'll keep down, but he doesn't have the heart to tell her he throws up the alcohol, too. 

“Is it?” He sips the orange juice, the vodka a sour undercurrent, but he can almost feel his blood swallow it all whole, hungry for something else, something darker, something that his blood feels belongs only to it, passing through his body straight to all of his greedy greedy blood cells. “I didn't mean it to be. I just meant—you seemed to have a lot of opinions regarding my own use or not use of my mutation, and yet...” He shrugs, holding his palms up as if facing an execution squad. Raven's eyes flash yellow and then back to perfect Aryan blue, easy easy smile, perfectly straight teeth. Erik wonders idly if she stole her face from a stock image photo, a girl with a Labrador and an easy, easy, flashbulb smile, family they hired all around her, hair carefully tossed by a wind machine. 

“I don't give a fuck if you use your mutation or not. Skewer as many people as you want, rattle all the forks you want, or don't. What I care about—what I _have a lot of opinions about_ is how long you can keep it all up. The drugs, I mean. The kicking. That doesn't have anything to do with your mutation, no matter what you say.” She pours herself a glass of orange juice, no vodka, and eats one of those breakfast bars with the fake milk holding the cereal bits together. 

“You're an awful lot like your brother.” 

“I'll take that as a compliment.” 

Erik isn't sure whether he intended it to be one or not.  
– 

Emma comes into Charles's room uninvited, but Erik doesn't really know what else he could have expected, since he steadfastly refused to leave Charles's bed when Raven's party of the weekend was in full swing. The drugs are always free and never-ending and he knows he hasn't taken anything in a week, not even a Xanax or a sleeping aid or fucking NyQuil, and Emma's smile is patiently indulgent, as always. Erik's wearing Charles's too short sweatpants, the bedcovers everywhere but on him, sweat cooling on his skin and on his scalp. He's nervous, so the metal in the room starts shaking, a precursor to its slow migration across the room to him, an unintentional call to arms. 

“Are you a kept man now, Erik Lehnsherr?” 

Erik is tired of people invoking his whole name as if it holds some power over him. He is the last Lehnsherr, and ghosts have no power in this world. 

“No more than I ever was. When was the last time you paid for anything, Emma Frost?” 

Emma doesn't answer, smiling snidely. She crosses her arms over her chest and waits. Erik doesn't move, not even an inch. The metal has mostly calmed, quivering only a little in every couple of seconds, ticking by like hours. 

“Is this how it's going to be? After everything I've done for you?” 

Erik swallows, mouth dry. It takes everything in his power not to send metal metal metal at her, all of it practically begging him to loose it from its chains, the tether he has to consciously send out, keeping all of the metal in its proper place and not wherever he wants it to go. “And what have you done for me?” It's a whisper. He wishes he could shout it, but he can't, afraid of the past or of Emma or of something else entirely, maybe the future, a future where he's clean and sober and a mutant with no discernible defects and not suffering from PTSD and a functioning community member and maybe Charles Xavier's boyfriend. “What have you ever done for me, Emma?” 

She turns on her heel and leaves him, the door latching like thunder behind her.  
–

Two weeks. Two weeks with no drugs. Not even a pill. Not even methadone. Not even Charles Xavier's intervention. He hasn't really gotten out of Charles's bed, Raven delivering him herbal teas and biscuits that he's managing to keep down now. Sometimes she mixes in a vodka shot, a lovely heady undercurrent, but mostly only when all of the metal in the house starts shaking in time with Erik's withdrawal symptoms. Erik doesn't mention it to Charles when he comes to bed at night and Charles doesn't ask him about it, instead going on about his day, the future of mutant kind, all of the things that Erik imagines he'll never understand and never fully anticipates becoming a part of. Charles seems to have all of these plans, all of these ideas, that Erik can't seem to find himself in at all. He should be more afraid because in some respects he's building his future around Charles, but Erik's not sure what else to do anymore. 

Charles is different tonight, his back stiff, his hair rucked, something splintered in his movements. Instead of wrapping himself around Erik, he sits on the end of the bed, like he did that night at Azazel's. It's suddenly become apparent to Erik that although Charles may know everything of value about Erik, that doesn't mean he knows everything of value about Charles. Or anything of value about Charles. 

“What do you think we're doing here?” He asks the question out loud, but it echos in Erik's mind, his presence heavy and searching. He's not there, but Erik can feel the power in his voice, that with one little shove, he can be there, he can find what he wants without being polite. There's a gravity to the question that Erik didn't expect; usually Charles telepathic threats are idle. He'd be smirking, laughing, playing, but he's completely serious now, the line in his back as straight as the question. 

“I'm not—I'm not sure. I was waiting for you to tell me.” 

Charles moves faster than Erik expects, forcing his back against the wooden bed frame and Erik reflexively reaches for metal, seizing it up if he needs it, hissing as the pain hits him, harder than he remembered it ever being. It's been a long time since he's done anything sober, even getting a bruise. Charles's breath is hot on his face and Erik wants to crane up, kiss his lips even though they're a stern, straight line, but Charles grabs his chin, forces his head flat against the edge of the headboard, just where the wood would dig in, his fingers tight on Erik's jaw. 

“Are you afraid of me?” Erik nods against his hold, closing his eyes shut as wood digs into his scalp. “As afraid as you were of Shaw?” Erik shakes his head. Charles loosens his grip, running his hands over Erik's mouth as he lets it fall open. “You don't understand how much like him I can be, though. How much easier it would be for me. All of the people that hate us, Erik, that want to hurt us, that hurt _you_ , I can make sure they'll never hurt anyone again. I can change their minds completely, get them on our side, or burn them up, make them forget everything they've ever loved, make them people they wouldn't even recognize.” Charles puts one finger in Erik's mouth and Erik wraps his lips around it, hearing a scream in the back of his head. A little boy. Him. It's him. Fifteen years ago, strapped to a table, reaching for metal in vain, too weak and young and untrained to bend his mutation to his will. Charles's hand on his chest is hot, a branding iron, and Erik sucks more earnestly on Charles's finger, strangling back a moan, feeling like he's losing an edge. 

“Even you. I know you don't dream of a future where your mutation is considered beautiful. Where your children can live without fear of living in internment camps or registering their mutations on arbitrary lists. But I do. And I could make you believe too, Erik. I could make you believe that what I'm doing is for the greater good.” 

Two fingers in his mouth, Charles thumb running on his wet bottom lip. “You think I don't know what it's like, but can you _imagine_. I was five years old the first time I answered a question that wasn't asked of me. I could _feel_ people's agony, know exactly what their hearts desired before I could understand what it meant to want something that badly, I knew when people lied and how much they hated themselves and their passing violent sexual fantasies and I didn't know better than to tell them. When someone touched me, I would get lost in their memories, living their life backwards through their own mind. And, of course, no one could tell me what was wrong with me or send me anywhere, there weren't schools for people like me, only the camps. And Brian Xavier's only son couldn't go to a mutant internment camp, no matter what the law said. So they shut me up, kept me away from everyone, but I could hear them, all the time, through the walls.” 

Three fingers and he's shoving them in and out of Erik's mouth as he talks, tears in the corners of his eyes. “I funded the first survivors' group home. I funded the first academy. And for men like you. Men who won't even thank me unless you're _made_ to thank me.” 

Erik grabs Charles's other wrist and pulls his hand towards the front of the sweatpants he's “borrowed” from Charles and Charles shoves his fingers in far enough to choke Erik. He tilts his head back, sputtering around Charles's fingers before Charles finally removes them, smearing Erik's spit down his chin. Erik lifts his hips up, into Charles's touch, desire sticking in the soreness in the back of his throat, but Charles jerks his hand away, backing off a little. Erik sits up and reaches for Charles, but he bats his arm away. “Charles, I thought—”

“I know what you're thinking, remember?” He laughs, bitterly, running a hand through his hair. There are still tears in his eyes. “So _that's_ what you thought we were doing here.” 

“No, not exactly.” Erik can feel Charles reaching for explanation, but Erik shuts his mind like a steel trap. He can feel Charles shock, almost indignation, so he presses on, doing his best to articulate it rather than letting Charles steal it straight from his mind. He wants to hear himself say it out loud. Maybe it won't mean more to Charles that way, but it'll mean more to Erik. “I thought—think—that you make me a better person. And I want to be with you. Whatever that means. If that means sex, fine. It doesn't, that's also fine, I just—I never want to be without you. I've never met at mutant who made me feel like being a mutant wasn't something to be ashamed of.” 

“What would you most like to do to me?” 

Erik's mouth is locked in cement. He doesn't even try to articulate anything. So Charles tries to pull something from his mind, his mental hand heavy and cutting through Erik's mind, not unlike Emma had when he was much younger, before he'd developed even the feeble psychic shields he has now. “Are you keeping all of your fantasies locked away from me? You don't have to protect me, Erik. I'm well used to it by now.” 

Erik shakes his head. “It's not that. It's—it's hard to explain, but I... Of course, I want you in that way. But when I think about you, I don't think about those kinds of things.” Erik feels the heat rise in his face and he looks away from Charles. Charles gets on his knees and crawls towards Erik, reaching to turn Erik's chin, forces Erik to meet his eyes again, a much different but equally forceful touch than the one that rammed his head into the headboard. Charles's eyes are soft, but distant, as if he's afraid Erik will be able to read his mind by association. “It's just like. Everything inside me is screaming to get at everything inside you. Like metal screams at me.” 

Charles casually reaches under the waistband of Erik's sweatpants and strokes him through his briefs, eyes still locked with Erik's. Erik sucks in a breath, palms flat on the bed, not feeling anything but a rushing sound in his head and the heat of Charles's palm, the melted presence of Charles in his mind, as if Charles has dissolved into all the vital parts of him, nesting there. 

“You were the first adult mutant I ever saw, did you know that?” Erik shakes head head because he doesn't think he can talk, even though Charles is barely moving his hand at all. “I saw you on television, at your trial. And I heard what they were saying about the camps, about Shaw, and I thought, I hope I get to meet this mutant someday. I hope I get to meet him and tell him what he's meant to me. You changed my life, you know.” He moves his hand faster and Erik lets his whole body relax, practically crying in his own mind, two weeks worth of sober frustration rubbed away through the thin fabric of his underwear. “And when I found you at Emma's party, I thought—well, I don't know what I thought. I thought maybe—”

Erik tangles his fingers in Charles's hair, ignoring his tiny growl of protest. “Charles, please shut up.” 

It will be easy to stay sober if he can just get a thousand nights like this. Careful touches and Charles's moans when Erik peels off the layers of cardigan and pressed shirt and East coast reserve. 

He doesn't get a thousand nights, though.  
–

The first place Erik goes in the house when his bones don't feel like they'll rip straight through his skin is the study. It seems that Charles _inhabits_ it, but he hasn't truly inherited it from his father yet, the décor British academic with Charles's ecclecticness layered on top like dust. Erik touches the spines of books he'll never read, leafs through papers on the desk and notes that Charles's handwriting, at least, is neat—clean, straight, simple and he never lets the fountain pens he writes with bleed. Everything in the study says B. Xavier, though, and Erik understands heirlooms, maybe better for never having any, but he also understands scars. 

Charles comes in late and Erik's fallen asleep on the couch a few times, but he always wakes up sweating and wishing he hadn't fallen asleep. Raven brings him tea and sandwiches around two in the afternoon, but she doesn't stay long and Erik doesn't want to ask her too many questions, wants to save them for Charles who never talks about himself, but tries to press it into Erik's skin with heavy touches, even though he's good at telling the stories he doesn't want to. 

“Come to bed.” Charles stands in the doorway as if he needs to be invited into the room and Erik stretches on the couch, trying to imprint himself, soften the edges, build himself into the wooden paneling so that Charles can't get him out, like he can't seem to get the ghost of Brian Xavier out. “You shouldn't be in here.” 

Erik reaches out and lifts up the iron, black king on the chess set. It's one of the only things not covered by a thick layer of dust, a layer of dust that talks more about Charles's willingness to ignore the things he doesn't like than a will to leave things undisturbed. “I shouldn't be in here or you shouldn't?” 

Charles's mouth tightens at the corners, turns down. “ _You_ shouldn't be in here.” Erik feels a stretch, a tightness in his chest, a focus that strains and drags like he never remembers as he pushes the metal away from him centimeter by centimeter, keeping it steady. He stills it in front of Charles. Mouth still tight, Charles extends his hand, palm up, and Erik drops the king into his hand, pushing all of the air out of his lungs at the same time. “You know everything about me and you still pulled me out of that bathtub instead of letting me kill myself like I've always wanted. Let me return the favor.” 

“I'm not killing myself.” 

“You've kept a monument to a man you didn't even know. You're surrounding yourself with people so damaged they won't take a look around and realize that you've been quietly self-destructing for years, waiting for someone to turn around and read your mind. You've lived behind these walls for too long, Charles. And even when you're outside, you just build them for yourself again. The same walls. You're putting yourself on the front lines of a battle you can't win if you don't set yourself free. Tear down the walls. Start with me.” 

Charles sits down on the couch next to Erik and even though he doesn't say anything, letting the silence stretch on like another ghost for the collection, Erik feels like it's a start.  
–

**Author's Note:**

> it's been a solid 2 years and although I had some stuff mapped out about where this was going, but clearly I'm not going to get around to writing it. SO. let's just say it's finished. if you're interested in what I had mapped out/what I have written of the second part, you can always come talk to me on tumblr


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